Portable combustion cookers and heaters are well known and widely used, particularly in developing countries as a primary means of food preparation and by campers and others who lack more elaborate cooking facilities. These devices operate to burn a hydrocarbon-based fuel source and direct the resultant heat onto a cooking vessel. The most versatile cookers are those that are capable of burning a variety of biomass fuels which are often more readily available than petroleum-based fuel sources such as liquefied or gaseous petroleum products such as kerosene, methane, natural gas, heating oil, and the like. Many portable combustion cookers are inefficient and highly polluting. Inefficient combustion results in the production of high levels of soot, smoke, and other airborne particulates and pollutants, and inefficient heating of the cooking vessel causing a concomitant increase in fuel consumption.
Access to electricity in camping and emergency situations, and in developing countries, is often sporadic, unreliable, or entirely unavailable. Accordingly, combustion cookers have been designed that convert a portion of the combustion heat into electricity using a thermoelectric generator (“TEG”). See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,297,271, U.S. Pat. No. 8,861,062, and U.S. 2015/0201805. A heat sink element (e.g., a metal or other thermal conductor) transfers heat from the combustion chamber to the TEG for electricity production. However, there is a need to provide combination cooker/generator devices that are portable, inexpensive to produce, energy efficient, and environmentally friendly, while retaining the versatility of mixed biomass fuel cooker.